Satirizing the clergy is invariably a risky business, and to avoid trouble, cartoonists seem to have laid down a simple ground rule: clergymen, monks and nuns will be rotund, curious and comic. Within these limitations, only a few artists have managed to poke fun at clerics without being cloyingly cute. One of the best is the New Statesman's "Phelix," who in a new book, entitled Top Sacred, was delighting Londoners last week with a wry, rueful but gentle look at life on the Inside.
Phelix transfers the commonplaces of everyday life within monastic walls. Towels in the washroom (whose door is marked...